Boston History Blog

Charles Street Meeting House // 1807

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The Charles Street Meeting House at the corner of Charles and Mount Vernon streets in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood is one of the finest examples of a Federal period meeting house in New England. The building is thought to have been designed by architect, Asher Benjamin, due to its similarities to his Old West Church on Cambridge Street built a year prior. At the time of construction in 1807, the church stood near the banks of the Charles River, but is now a distance away from the Charles following a land-filling campaign to expand buildable land in the city. The Charles Street Meeting House consists of a two-story gable-roof main structure with a three-story tower on the south (primary) elevation that supports a clock tower and wooden cupola with double Ionic pilasters supporting the domed roof. The building was constructed for the Third Baptist Church congregation, who used the nearby Charles River for baptisms. In the years before the American Civil War, it was a stronghold of the anti-slavery movement, and was the site of notable speeches from such anti-slavery activists as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Tubman and others. The Baptists sold the structure to the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1876, which was part of the first Black independent denomination in the United States. The AME Church sold the building in 1939 to the Charles Street Meeting House Society, and after a period of use as an Albanian Orthodox church, it was sold to the organization that is now, Historic New England, who were required to keep restrictions to preserve the building’s exterior. It served as a Universalist church from 1949 to 1979 with rented space inside to tenants, including a LGBT newsletter, Gay Community News, which was founded in the building in 1973. In 1980 the Meeting House was purchased by the Charles Street Meeting House Associates, who worked with the architectural firm of John Sharrat Associates to restore the building and adaptively reuse it into four floors of offices, with retail on the ground floor.

Former Boston Fire Department Engine House No.10 – Hill House // 1949

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This iconic former firehouse at the corner of Mount Vernon and River streets in Beacon Hill, was built in 1949 and despite its relatively young age, has become an iconic landmark in the neighborhood. Since the mid-19th century, this site has been occupied by a fire station, most of which as a Second Empire, brick engine house with a mansard roof. After WWII, the Fire Department struggled to use the 1860s station which was built before the large, vehicular fire trucks replaced horses-drawn apparatus. In 1946, the Victorian station was razed and architect, John Mathew Gray, furnished plans for a new, Colonial Revival style station that could accommodate the larger fire trucks. The new station opened in April 1949 and Engine 10 remained here until 1982, when the company moved to 123 Oliver Street, Downtown. The Fire Department retained ownership of the building until 1995, and around this time, the building served as the filming location for television shows Spenser For Hire, which ran from 1985 to 1988 and the MTV series The Real World, which was broadcast in 1997. Since 1998, the property has been home to Hill House, Inc. a long-standing non-profit providing sports activities for children, adult education classes and programs for senior citizens.

Faulkner-Hayden House // 1881

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This unique house at 29 Brimmer Street in Boston’s Beacon Hill, was completed in 1881 is architecturally distinctive compared to the early 19th century homes that the neighborhood is known for. The five-story residence has a raised entrance up a flight of steps set within an arched opening. To the side, an arched window frames the facade and has an ornate terracotta panel as a base. More terracotta ornament can be found at the second floor and under the cornice as a thick band frieze with a copper-clad mansard roof above. The single-family residence was built in 1881 for Charles Faulkner (1811-1885), a commission merchant, for his daughter, Ann Ruth Faulkner the year of her marriage to Charles Rowley Hayden. Mr. Hayden was a musician and vocalist. For the new wedding gift, Faulkner hired the esteemed architectural firm of Bradlee & Winslow prepare the designs. The former Faulkner-Hayden House today contains five condominiums.



Baker-Byrd House // 1888

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Located on Brimmer Street in Beacon Hill, this handsome residence is constructed of rough-faced brownstone laid in a random ashlar pattern and is among the most unique in a neighborhood known for brick townhouses. Decorative treatment includes a stone band that is carved with foliate and faces, colonettes that rise along the facade at the bay, and an ornate molded copper entablature and parapet at the roof. The residence dates to 1888 and was built for Seth R. Baker, a Boston real estate developer at the end of the 19th century. It can be inferred that the building was designed by architect, Ernest N. Boyden, as Baker hired Boyden as architect for a half-dozen other apartment buildings between 1888-1890. Antoino Xavier, a Portuguese-born mason is listed as the builder. In the 1910s, the property was purchased by Marie Ames Byrd, wife of polar explorer Richard A. Byrd, who lived a few houses away at 9 Brimmer Street. She rented the four apartments to boarders through the 1930s.


West Hill Place // 1916

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West Hill Place is a small development in Beacon Hill that feels like it was transported to Boston from London! The group of 14 four-story brick townhouses that comprise West Hill Place were built on the site of a gas holder in 1916. The Georgian Revival style development was designed by the firm of Coolidge and Carlson, who aligned six of the townhomes to face west on the Charles River Embankment and arranged the remaining eight residences around a circular court. The development was inspired by Charles River Square, located to its south and built six years prior. The driveway extends off what is today Storrow Drive, with a second exit set within an arched passageway that connects through the Charles Street garage, which was built later. The dark brick with cast stone trim works elegantly with the curving facades facing the courtyard, many of which are adorned with arched doorways and the original iron lanterns. The development has been harmed by the creation of Storrow Drive in the 1950s, but it remains one of the most unique and picturesque enclaves in New England. 

Charles River Square // 1910

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Charles River Square, a delightful development of red brick and cast-stone Colonial Revival townhomes in the Beacon Hill Flat, was developed in 1910 from plans by Boston architect, Frank A. Bourne. The development consists of a total of 21 residences, 19 of which front on the courtyard that is known as Charles River Square. The development is accessed off Charles River Road (which was made a busy thoroughfare in the 1950s and renamed Storrow Drive) and through a Palladianesque passageway off Revere Street. Along with its neighbor to the north, West Hill Place (1916), another group of attached townhouses organized around a courtyard built years later, its layout is a departure from the previous approach to urban planning, resembling the atmosphere of an old London street or mews. Charles River Square remains one of the most desirable developments in the exclusive Beacon Hill neighborhood.

Charles and Elizabeth Ware Mansion // 1870

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Located at the corner of Brimmer and Mount Vernon streets in Beacon Hill, this stately mansion showcases the various architectural styles and methods utilized by architects in the waning decades Victorian-era Boston. Set atop a brownstone base, the floors above are in the “Panel Brick” style, which utilizes brick masonry in a variety of decorative patterns of slight projecting or receding panels. The style was popularized by the Boston architectural firm of Ware & Van Brunt, as noted by architectural historian, Bainbridge Bunting. As expected, this house (and the attached townhouse next door) was designed by William Robert Ware for his uncle, Dr. Charles Eliot Ware (1814-1887) and his wife, Elizabeth Cabot Lee Ware. Dr. Ware was a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and secretary of the Massachusetts Medical Society. After the death of Dr. Ware and Elizabeth, the property was inherited by their daughter, Mary L. Ware (1858-1937), a naturalist and botanist who was the principal sponsor of the Harvard Museum of Natural History‘s famous Glass Flowers. After the death of Mary, the property sold out of the family to Robert Wales Emmons III, a financier from a yachting family. The mansion remains in a great state of preservation, and is among the great Victorian-era residences in Beacon Hill.

Church of the Advent // 1878

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The Church of the Advent in Beacon Hill, Boston, is a landmark example of a church designed in the Victorian Gothic style with strong English influence. The congregation, established in 1844, purchased a large corner lot at Brimmer and Mount Vernon streets on the newly made filled land west of Charles Street in Beacon Hill Flat, to construct their new church. In 1875, John Hubbard Sturgis, a Boston architect and parishioner, began designing the red brick with sandstone-trimmed church set on a corner lot with dominant corner tower and octagonal steeple. Construction began in phases beginning in 1878 and took years until the steeple was completed in 1888. Before its completion, John H. Sturgis died and his nephew, Richard Clipston Sturgis, oversaw the completion of the church, which became somewhat of a memorial to his late uncle. Following the completion of the Church of the Advent, Sturgis’ widow, extended family and clients donated a major portion of the interior art, stained glass windows, and furnishings. The polychromatic exterior in red and charred brick mixed with sandstone trim appears to have been inspired by his designs for the original Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1876, demolished in 1911.) The Church of the Advent in Boston is one of the finest ecclesiastical buildings in New England and is the master-work of one of America’s great architects.

Eye and Ear Infirmary Nurse’s Residence // 1909

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The Massachusetts Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary (now Massachusetts Eye and Ear) began in 1824 by doctors, Edward Reynolds and John Jeffries II as a free weekly clinic they operated out of a rented room in Boston’s Scollay Square. At the time, Boston was an immigration destination for laborers arriving from Europe, among whom occupational injuries were common, but affordable medical care was scarce. With an increasing population and increasing medical needs, the clinic expanded rapidly. In 1849, a new clinic was built on Charles Street, just south of the West Boston Bridge (now Longfellow Bridge) from plans by Edward C. Cabot. As demand grew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the hospital sought expansion and built a new facility farther north on Charles Street, closer to Massachusetts General Hospital. The 1849 building was deemed excess and demolished, soon to be replaced by the current building on the site, the Nurse’s Dormitory. Built in 1909, this handsome, four-story brick and stone structure was designed by the office of Page and Frothingham in the Colonial Revival style, which contributes to the architectural character of Beacon Hill. The building provided much-needed residential space for nurses and other staff people who worked at the new Eye and Ear Infirmary a few blocks away. The building was later converted into an inn, the John Jeffries House (after one of the founders of the infirmary) until 2016, when the site closed and was converted into a wing of the new Whitney Hotel by Hacin Architects!

Tebbetts-Bowditch House // 1856

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The townhouse at 4 Walnut Street in Beacon Hill is among the most architecturally unique buildings in the neighborhood. The main facade consists solely of a bowed front, which contains a deeply recessed entry to the side. To the right of the entrance, a later tripartite window exhibiting Queen Anne/Colonial Revival multi-pane sash pierces the southern half of the bow front.  At the third story, a massive wooden oriel window projects over the street below and contains a window set within a recessed panel. Above, the mansard roof ties in with its neighbor. The residence was built in 1856 and purchased by William C. Tebbetts, a dry goods merchant who was partner in a Downtown firm. By 1890, the residence was owned for a short period by Ernest W. Bowditch (1850-1918), a celebrated landscape architect and engineer. By the 1930s, the property became a boarding house, primarily for single women and widows. Today, the former single-family home contains eight apartments and from the exterior, presents some Victorian flair and quirkiness not commonly seen on the South Slope of Beacon Hill. 

Henry S. Grew Townhouse // 1856

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Built in 1856, the townhouse at 2 Walnut Street is a unique Second Empire style townhouse erected on one of the last undeveloped lots on the South Slope of Boston’s exclusive Beacon Hill neighborhood. The three-story, brick residence is capped by a mansard roof and its facade is dominated by a full-height octagonal bay, which at the center on each floor, is a recessed brick panel in lieu of windows. The property was originally owned by Henry Sturgis Grew (1834-1910) a real estate developer and politician who split his time between this residence and a large estate called Grew’s Hill, that grew to several hundred acres and contained an active farm, part of which was later incorporated into Stony Brook Reservation. Henry Grew’s daughter, Jane Norton Grew, would go on to marry John Pierpont Morgan Jr. (J. P. Morgan) in 1890. The Grew House was modernized in the 20th century with a Classical door surround, but otherwise, it maintains the appearance of when it was built in 1856. 

Tudor Apartments // 1887

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Frederic Tudor (1783-1864) was a businessman and merchant known as Boston’s “Ice King” having founded the Tudor Ice Company and becoming a pioneer of the international ice trade in the early 19th century. Frederic Tudor lived in a house at the corner of Beacon and Joy streets in Beacon Hill, Boston, and after his death, the property was inherited by his widow, Euphemia Fenno and their children. By 1885, the old Tudor House was demolished and replaced by The Tudor Apartments, which was built between 1885 and 1887 to house twelve upper-class families who sought smaller living space as opposed to the typical townhouses in Beacon Hill. Designed by architect, Samuel J. F. Thayer, the nine-story Queen Anne/Romanesque Revival building features a brownstone base with brick walls above, combining the traditional Boston bowfront with late 19th century flair at the upper floors with the partial mansard roof punctuated with dormers and oriel windows. Thayer designed the Joy Street elevation with cascading bays to provide interiors with views of the Boston Common and ample natural light.


Callender-Sedgwick House // 1802

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Built in 1802, this large residence at 14 Walnut Street is among the oldest extant mansions on the South Slope of Beacon Hill and includes a large hidden garden behind a granite block retaining wall. John Callender, Clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth, purchased land at the corner of Mount Vemon and Walnut streets for $2,000 and immediately started construction on his requested “small house finished for little money $5,000-$7,000”, but this was anything but modest. The house originally had its primary facade facing Mount Vernon Street, but in 1821, Walnut Street was lowered by city officials, so Callender had the granite retaining wall built for the garden and new entry built on Walnut Street. Mr. Callender lived here until his death in 1833 and the property was purchased by members of the Lyman family and later by Harriot Curtis (1881-1974) an early amateur female skier and golfer who used her fortune as a philanthropist, funding medical facilities in Boston for impoverished immigrants and served as dean of women in Hampton Institute in Virginia, an HBCU from 1927-1931. The most significant owner, Ellery Sedgwick (1872-1960), lived here from 1908 until his death in 1960. Sedgwick worked as editor of the Atlantic Monthly (now known as The Atlantic), and under his ownership, the magazine became one of the most circulated magazines in the world. The Callender-Sedgwick House features unique flushboard siding, providing a seamless surface that resembles a masonry wall when painted earth tones and a 19th century oriel window. The brick end elevation is punctuated with bays of hung windows and the recessed entry with a long, granite garden wall which has been well-preserved by owners.


Tuckerman-Parkman Mansion // 1825

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The Tuckerman-Parkman Mansion at 33 Beacon Street, like its neighbor, was built in 1825 from plans by architect, Cornelius Coolidge, in the Greek Revival style. The residence was originally purchased by Edward Tuckerman, a wealthy merchant and father of Professor Edward Tuckerman, a prominent lichenologist for whom Tuckerman Ravine on Mount Washington was named. Tuckerman Sr. lived here at 33 Beacon Street until his death. The next owners, Mrs. Eliza Parkman and her son, George Francis Parkman (1823-1908) moved here after the brutal murder and following sensational trial of her husband, Dr. George Parkman (1790-1849). The 1849 trial of Parkman’s murderer, Professor John White Webster of the Harvard Medical School, was called the “case of the century”. Professor Webster owed Dr. Parkman a substantial sum of money. The professor lost patience with Parkman’s constant reminders that his payment was long overdue and killed Parkman in a rage, dismembered his tall, lanky frame and concealed the body parts in a wall of a Harvard Medical School laboratory. With the help of a janitor, Dr. Parkman’s body was discovered. A murder trial ensued, and Professor White was found guilty and subsequently hung. The murder trial has been widely cited as one of the earliest uses of forensic evidence to identify a body. Seeking refuge from the attention and pain from the loss of the family patriarch and trial, Ms. Parkman and her son, George, moved to this home in 1853. Widow, Eliza Parkman died in 1877 and George F. Parkman lived in this home until 1908. In his will, Mr. Parkman bequeathed his mansion and over $5 Million to the City of Boston for the maintenance of the Boston Common. The Tuckerman-Parkman Mansion was restored by the City of Boston in 1972 and used almost exclusively as the Mayor’s residence until 1984. The house is now the official reception hall of the Mayor’s office and appears much as it did when built 200 years ago.

Russell-Bradlee Mansion // 1825

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The land at the corner of Beacon and Joy streets in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood was once John Hancock’s west pasture for his grand manor (razed in 1863) until 1819, when subdivision of the Hancock estate began following his death. In 1821, Israel Thorndike, one of the leading land speculators of early nineteenth-century Boston, began buying out the Hancock heirs and house lots overlooking the Boston Common were sold to John Hubbard and George Williams Lyman, who hired architect Cornelius Coolidge, to build some stately Greek Revival townhomes for wealthy Boston elites. The house at the corner of Beacon and Joy streets, 34 Beacon Street, was built in 1825 for Nathaniel Pope Russell, a leading Federal period China Trade merchant. By 1850, James B. Bradlee, a wealthy merchant, had acquired the property. Bradlee’s grandson Ogden Codman Jr., the influential late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century architect and interior decorator, was born in this house in 1863. Codman later collaborated with novelist and tastemaker Edith Wharton on ‘The Decoration of Houses‘, a book that had an enormous impact on the direction of interior design when it was published in the 1890s. Little, Brown and Company, a publishing company founded in 1837, purchased the former residence and moved their headquarters here in 1909. The publishing company sold the property in 1997, and it converted to a single-family home. In 2007, the residence was purchased by Northeastern University and has since been the President’s House.